For anyone remotely interesting in modern JIT/JIS manufacturing

[DGRossetti]

The BBC is reshowing "Car Making Live". Obviously massively overblown, but well worth a watch to see how the process of making modern cars in Britain is critical down to the hour.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p033zfvw

Hard to see it being able to survive even the mildest shift in shipping times ...

Sounds like something a nerd like me would love. Thanks for the tip.

I’ve no interest in cars but friends who work in supply chain tell me about the JIT and the impact Brexit will have on their businesses.

JIT was never a shock-proof system.

It's cheaper in cash terms, but the hidden expense is the 'cost' when it is disrupted. It's a major part of contingency/business continuity plans.

If you read the sorts of plans businesses using this model have, you'd walk away thinking they expected doom tomorrow and wonder why on earth they kept doing it that way!

It's awfully clever to whizz parts all over Europe to build one car, but isn't it horrendously ungreen?

I think eventually most production will be in the EU so there won’t be borders and tariffs to deal with.

If you read the sorts of plans businesses using this model have, you'd walk away thinking they expected doom tomorrow and wonder why on earth they kept doing it that way!

Because customers like cheap.

It's awfully clever to whizz parts all over Europe to build one car, but isn't it horrendously ungreen?

Better have 100 or so ultra-efficient factories specialising in whatever they make, than one single giant factory making everything (and even then you're going to have to ship in hundreds of thousands of tonnes of raw materials ....)

Besides, if you're that worried about the environment, you'd be better off not making cars at all. Would have a massive improvement on the environment.

The point of most JIT supply contracts is that the onus is on the supplier to make sure they get the parts where they are supposed to be when they are supposed to be there. For some parts of the car industry the delivery slot can be as little as a few hours. For others, it can be a day or two either side of the call-off date.

In most of the JIT contracts I've seen the risk is all on the supplier, with compensation payments and loss of contract or preferred supplier status on the line. It's a flipping nightmare for my supply chain manager.

A friend works in supply chain for one of the UK car manufacturers, I hadn’t realised how quickly (and costly) production could be brought to a halt. How they will survive Brexit is scary.

if i miss a delivery slot i'm getting notifications of line stop within a day. It is that tight.

I work in Product Development in a British OEM, and we're not as precarious as manufacturing but Brexit is already starting to make life harder for us. Finance departments are twitchy about fluctuating exchange rates, and our usually smooth trading with French and German companies is fraught with concerns over all of the unknowns. No-one wants to be tied into a contract that might turn into a stranglehold in a few months time. We're in for a very rough ride.

A good programme last night about the Airbus Baluga, and how they move all the specialist parts from Spain, Germany and France and stick them onto a sawn-of A330.

Vertical Integration used to be a thing. Ford's Dagenham plant was built with its own smelting works. Iron ore went in one end and cars came out the other. In practice, a specialist smelter will have the economies of scale.